Clean Fuels to Drive Economic Growth

“Today no area holds more promise than our investments in American energy,” said President Obama, in his annual State of the Union address. In addition to wind and solar energy, and energy efficiency, the president also called for investment in new technologies that will “shift our cars and trucks away from oil.”

Breaking free from the oil monopoly will give consumers choice at the pump and protection from gas price spikes. And if we develop the right kind of alternative fuels for our vehicles--clean, sustainable, low-carbon fuels, or advanced biofuels—we can reduce global warming pollution as well. What’s more, encouraging the growth of the advanced biofuel industry can provide an economic boost for the country, according to research by Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), an NRDC affiliate. The group’s new website, Fueling Growth, tracks the growth of the advanced biofuel industry, and profiles several innovative new companies that are part of this mini-boom.

E2’s latest survey shows that more than 80 advanced biofuel businesses have sprouted up in dozens of states across the country. California alone is home to 30 of these innovative companies, which do everything from biorefinery plant design to finding new sources of renewable fuels.

While the production of sustainable biofuels is fertile ground for scientific innovation, the industry itself isn’t solely high-tech. For every scientist who figures out how to squeeze fuel out of plant waste, there’s a farmer who’s suddenly got a market for his leftover corn stalks or wheat straw; the worker who runs the machinery that turns that straw into liquid fuel; the entrepreneur who starts a biofuel distribution company; or the truck driver who plies a new route from the biorefinery to the fuel pump. That’s how this industry is creating jobs not just in California, but all over the country.

By 2015, 26 new biorefineries, dedicated to making advanced biofuels (not corn ethanol, which fails to deliver greenhouse gas reductions, in addition to degrading soil and polluting water) will be open for business. These refineries will be located in places like Hugoton, Kansas, and near Tupelo, Mississippi, where the state has instituted production incentives to attract biorefineries. The new refineries alone will produce about 700 million gallons of clean, renewable, domestic fuel, and have the potential to create more than 18,000 jobs.

E2 calculates that if state and the federal clean fuel standards are implemented as planned, the entire advanced biofuel industry could create up to 48,000 jobs by 2015. Low carbon fuel standards, which reduce global warming pollution, are critical to the continued growth of this industry. (These standards also encourage the development of other clean alternative fuels and electric transport as well.)

“There has to be a market that we can forecast before we start scaling up and do more hiring,” says chemist Virginia Klausmeier, CEO of Sylvatex, a company that started in a garage in Eugene, Oregon, and makes a clean-burning diesel fuel additive.

At the moment, the advanced biofuels market is largely spurred by the federal renewable fuels standard, military interest (the military sees its reliance on oil as a national security risk), and by California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Propel Fuels, a biofuel distribution company that is setting up biofuel stations and pumps in California, moved its operations from Seattle to California in 2008. “State policies have helped to create a level playing ground for us to compete with the existing petroleum industry," CEO Matt Horton told the LA Times.

The military’s interest in biofuels alone could generate $10 billion in economic activity, according to E2. Both the Navy and the Air Force plan to replace half their petroleum-based fuels with biofuels by 2020, and have already begun demonstrating the viability of plant-based jet fuel. The Navy recently launched its Great Green Fleet at RIMPAC, the naval exercises off the coast of Hawaii, flying a host of biofuel-powered aircraft off the deck of the USS Nimitz, one of the world’s largest warships, which was also running on a biofuel blend.

Boosting our production of advanced biofuels—those that do not interfere with food production and are produced with an eye to reducing environmental impacts--is critical to breaking our dependence on oil, providing consumers a choice at the pump, and shifting this country toward a clean energy future. Creating smart policies to develop advanced biofuels now will pay us back in spades—in good jobs, in clean air, in healthier soil and water, and in a more stable climate.

I am the Executive Director of NRDC. The position is my second at NRDC. Beginning in 1994, I led the Clean Water Program for five years, before leaving in 1999 to serve as the head of the Environmental Protection Bureau for the Attorney General of the State of New York.

America's EPA is forcing the oldest of the coal fired power plants to shut down, and or be converted to natural gas, America's clean energy source.

Wouldn't this be a great time for America to become Radical about Energy Efficiency, and design these "new" natural gas power plants to operate at near 100% energy efficiency? Why Not?

The residential market has proven that Natural gas can be used so much more efficiently. They have their high efficiency Condensing boilers and furnaces and Condensing water heaters.

The commercial and industrial market has the technology of Condensing Flue Gas Heat Recovery. With this Energy Saving technology they too can consume their natural gas to over 90% energy efficiency. This recovered heat can be used as building space heating, or as heated domestic or process water. At a hotel or university this heat eenergy can neven be used to heat the swimming pools.

Lets Stop America From Wasting All This Natural Gas. Natural gas can be only used once. What natural gas is NOT wasted today, will be there to be used another day.

The use of the term “advanced biofuels” is just political spin. All biofuels emit approximately the same amount of carbon dioxide greenhouse gases and none even approach methane as a so called “low carbon fuel.” Used on a massive global scale biofuels will generate more greenhouses gases than tar sands.

There are no free lunches in the use of carbon-based fuels. In the worldwide use of these fuels by most economic sectors, we have an unmanaged “Tragedy of the Commons” with respect to global warming.

Biochar has many more applications than what you give it credit, 90% of the Biochar produced in Europe is process through their livestock either as a feed supplement or added to maneuvers to eliminate odor and cure many persistent enteric disorders. These systems have closed the nutrient loop on the farm.

Modern Thermal conversion of biomass burns only the hydrocarbons in that biomass, conserving the carbon for the soil. At the large farm or village scale modern pyrolysis reactors can relieve energy poverty, food insecurity and decreased dependency on chemical fertilizers.

Take a look at this YouTube video by the CEO of CoolPlanet Biofuels, guided by Google's Ethos and funding, along with GE, BP and Conoco, they are now building the reactors that convert 1 ton of biomass to 75 gallons of bio – gasoline and 1/3 ton Biochar for soil carbon sequestration.

their RIN-compliant Bio-gasoline is roughly 60% below the Mean gasoline emissions from the EPA baseline of 93 g CO2e/MJ fuel, or about 1/3 carbon negative, thus providing up to twice the global warming reduction benefits of today's cleanest technologies such as solar or wind electricity production and solar or wind recharged electric vehicles. Thus, some of the worst gross polluters can instantly become the cleanest and greenest by adopting fully carbon negative fuels.http://www.coolplanetbiofuels.com/index.html

literally the more you drive with their bio gasoline… The cleaner the atmosphere becomes.

this technology is not on the dusty shelf of some University but approved by the California gasoline authorities, next year they will be producing over 10M gallons per year.

A couple of years ago Marc Gunther profiled a young entrepreneur in Colorado who saw the opportunity to produce two products in a biprocessing facility: biochar and biofuel. There were some comments, of course including me, praising the soil enhancement of biochar on food productivity. The stuff is amazing.

So carbon sequestration, improved soils and food production, water conservation, and fuels production are possible combined.

I broke down an old corn farmer who always tells me to go drill for oil in North Dakota. He admitted this rich Minnesota soil was either created by Indians burning grass, or loggers sometimes burning themselves in the late 1800s. Soils science, like fuels chemistry is not trivial. Lots to learn. And lots of opportunity to provide in a global marketplace with shrinking resources and growing demand.